


Antiques And More

by Haberdasher



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2019-09-23 23:12:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17089535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haberdasher/pseuds/Haberdasher
Summary: A begrudging customer browses an unusual antiques store.





	Antiques And More

Bea quietly groaned as their mother drove into what all the signs proudly called “Historic Downtown Queensboro”, though they knew damn well that nothing of any importance had ever happened in Queensboro, and probably nothing ever would. A bunch of old farts and poorly-informed tourists, that’s all “downtown Queensboro” ever attracted. Sure, it had a plaque devoted to some rich guy’s birthplace and some old general’s summer home, but real history? In Queensboro? As if.

Their car pulled into a parking spot in front of a closed travel agency, and Bea’s mother turned to them as she turned off the engine. “Meet me back here in an hour and a half- actually, let’s round things off, make it by four. Meet me here at four, alright?”

“Sure, fine, whatever.” Bea didn’t bother trying to conceal the lack of excitement in their voice. Another one of Mom’s junk runs. Buy junk from antique dealers, sell it to collectors on the Internet, rake in the cash. Seemed like a crock, but apparently she managed to make it work, dragging Bea along with her half the time.

“You be careful now, you hear?” Bea’s mother ran her hand through Bea’s hair, and they had to stifle a shudder. “Love you, honey!”

Bea let out a muttered “love you too” as they left the car.

Over an hour and a half to kill in good ol’ “downtown Queensboro”… that was a mighty task indeed. Bea was half-tempted to just mess around on their phone the whole time, but it was damn cold out, and even if they wanted to just stand around and play games while shivering, they still didn’t have a good pair of touchscreen-sensitive gloves- besides, their phone was already half-dead, and the cold would just drain the battery all the faster.

Maybe, if they looked hard enough, they could find one shop that wasn’t a total waste of time.

Maybe.

Their eye was drawn to a store two doors down labeled as ANTIQUES AND MORE, and specifically to its brightly-colored CLOSING SALE sign, which had clearly been made in five minutes with Microsoft Word.

Bea shrugged and shuffled down the street and into the store. It was worth a shot.

A bell jingled as they entered, the cheery chime echoing through the mostly-empty store. A gray-haired woman in a blue dress stood at the cash register, a wrinkled smile plastered on her face. Bea stared and tried to remember if they had been to this particular store before, but wasn’t sure, as all the antique stores in Queensboro blended together in their mind.

“Everything in the store is half-off today, sweetie!” the gray-haired woman called out.

Bea grimaced at the sound of the word “sweetie”- there were a lot of words Bea might use to describe themself, but “sweet” was not one of them- but drew further into the shop regardless, tying their jacket around their waist as they looked through the dusty shelves. Each section of the store was labeled with another Word-made label- CLOTHES, BOOKS, COLLECTIBLES, and so on. It wasn’t… bad stuff, as far as antique shop crap went, but none of it was up Bea’s alley, though they had a feeling their mother would go bonkers over this place.

As they reached the far end of the shop and looked in the dimly-lit corner, Bea saw that this section was labeled, in magenta letters that were almost certainly Times New Roman, MAGIC.

Bea rolled their eyes. “ _Magic_? Seriously?”

“Oh yes.”

Bea spun around, and they hadn’t heard a single footstep but the old lady manning the register must have been following them, because now the two were face to face.

(Bea wasn’t proud that the only person they’d seen that day short enough that they could be truly face to face was this little old lady, but hey, it was what it was.)

They snorted. “So if all this is ‘magic’, this-” Bea picked up a glass vial half-filled with some sort of brown powder. “-must be- fairy dust?”

“Crushed dragon scale, actually.” Bea wasn’t sure if the old lady hadn’t noticed the disbelief in their voice, or was just willfully ignoring it, but her own voice was level. “It’s good for the complexion.”

Bea waved their hand around. “Sure, sure. Better quality than the ‘fairy dust’ I’ve seen them hawk to tourists in other shops, I’ll give you that.” The old lady opened her mouth to respond, but Bea pressed on. “And if this is ‘crushed dragon scale’, that cracked stone there would be a dragon’s egg, then?” Bea set down the vial and pointed to a dull gray stone covered in opalescent cracks.

“Cockatrice egg, actually.”

“What?”

The old woman cleared her throat before speaking up again. “It’s a cockatrice egg. Not a dragon egg. Common mistake.”

“…alrighty then. And the bell?”

“Keeps the fairies away, that does.”

Bea raised an eyebrow, a talent they’d honed over more hours of practice than they’d care to admit. “Are there a lot of fairies in Queensboro, then? So many that you need a special bell to keep them away?”

The old woman’s eyes were dark and somber as she replied, without a hint of amusement to be seen. “More than you know, child. More than you know.”

“Don’t call me ‘child’.” Bea turned back to the “cockatrice egg”, running her fingers across the cracks in the stone. They were set into the stone, it seemed, not true cracks but not painted on afterwards either. A geode, perhaps, or something similar, a lustrous gem hiding under a thin layer of unremarkable stone. “How much for the…” They couldn’t bring themself to call it an “egg”, so they just picked up the stone; it was cool to the touch and fit almost perfectly in the palm of their hand. “…for this?”

For a single, fleeting moment, Bea remembered how in some old fairy tales, “payment” would come in the form of one’s voice, or strands of hair, or other such ephemeral substances.

“For the cockatrice egg? Ten dollars.”

Bea narrowed their eyes. “That’s before the half-off discount you mentioned, right?”

“That’s after the discount, and it’s a bargain, I’ll have you know I had to-”

“I’m sure you fought off an army of monsters or something to get it, yeah, whatever. Make it five bucks and you’ve got a deal.”

Bea and the old lady made eye contact for a long moment before the old lady sighed and looked away.

“Fine. Five dollars it is. Come with me, then.”

The two walked to the cash register, where Bea rustled through their oversized backpack before retrieving five crumpled singles and dropping them into the woman’s outstretched hand.

“Very well. The egg is yours. Just be careful, for if-”

“Be careful, right, you sound like my mother.” Bea glanced down at their wristwatch. Shit, it was almost four already- where had the time gone? “Pleasure doing business with ya and all that, but I gotta go.”

The door jingled on the way out just as it had on the way in, except Bea thought it sounded somewhat less cheery the second time around.

A few moments later and Bea stood shivering next to the car. Their mother, they were glad to see, was on her way, carrying a number of large shopping bags. The old lady hadn’t offered her a bag, Bea noted, or any kind of carrying case, she just let them walk out of the store holding onto the stone. Hopefully it wasn’t too fragile.

“Bea!” Their mother quickened her pace and unlocked the car, which Bea was all too happy to climb inside. “How are you? Any exciting finds this time around?”

Bea slid the stone into their pants pocket, where it fit snugly, uncomfortably cold against their leg.

“Nah, nothing that interesting. What did  _you_  find?”


End file.
